It was the last days of Jesus’ earthly life. According to Matthew it was his last
parable of his last teaching and it concerned the last days1. Yes I am referring
to the parable of the Sheep and the Goats. What was the point Jesus was
trying to make in this parable? It mentions that the sheep went off into
eternal life and the goats into eternal punishment. Is this the central focus of
this parable? I don’t believe so.
In this paper I would like to suggest the primary meaning of this parable through an examination of its literary and historical context. But given so many Christians get hung up on the words “eternal fire” and “eternal punishment” in this story and therefore sidetracked from its real meaning, I will deal with these issues first and then return to the intent of the parable in its historical context.
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The goats and eternal conscious torment. It is maintained that these phrases are the strongest case for eternal conscious torment in the bible. Here’s how the argument goes. Jesus sets two fates in parallel: “eternal life” and “eternal punishment”. If “eternal life” is endless then, it is argued so is the “eternal punishment”. It is reasoned that “eternal” cannot mean one thing when applied to life and another when applied to punishment! Since eternal punishment means endless, then not everyone can or will be saved ... so they say. This sounds very convincing. The issue is however what does the Greek word translated “eternal” actually mean? Does it mean endless? |
Hi Santo,
Thanks for this superb article. I was thinking about the song, "Sheep Go to Heaven, Goats Go to Hell" by Cake. The video that comes with it can be viewed here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xau1ZQUtW5c
I find the band' (or animators') vision of who the sheep and goats are in the video. All the popular insiders go up ... the goat ends up being the one already outside who reacts violently. Interesting perspective.
Posted by: brad | June 14, 2013 at 01:25 PM